Languedoc-Roussillion region

Hey there - Andrew writing this.

We had a good trip down to Trouillas from St Remy on Saturday - I still love the motorways and zapping along at 130kms, although my love affair with toll gates is over !  I always seem to pick the line that has takes the longest; kinda like at the supermarket but much much longer and more frustating.  American's have queuing down to an art form whereas the Europeans seem to have adopted the chaos theory as a design principle :). Never mind, what's another 35 minutes in a car with  scratchy children.

Arrived at the vineyard and to a very warm welcome  from Rachel and her family.  Rach and I worked together in the 90's sometime and it was so neat to have the opportunity to see what her and her husband Jon have created.  Check them out at http://www.domainetreloar.com/
The Domaine should really be picking grapes now and infact we were going to go and pick and press some on Sunday - Kate was super excited about being able to press the grapes with her feet.  Unfortunately it appears that the Devlin's brought the rain with us and so Sunday picking was cancelled !.  We walked around the village (which took about 10minutes) nailed off a bit more homework.

In Sant Martii

Monday we popped down to Spain !  I love that !  In 45 minutes we were at a set of beautiful beaches and had a fantastic lunch in the sun.  We had a swim and while it's a little colder than the water in Cannes, it was still wonderful.  I think that on a good day in Christchurch we might get to Dunsandel in 45 minutes :).
We had dinner that night with Rachel, Jon, their girls (who are about Grace and Kate's ages) and 3 other of their friends who were over for the harvest.  The one thing about living on a vineyard is that there is always plenty of wine - and it is delicious.  The Domaine is receiving some very good reviews in the 'right' magazines and papers so it's a bit of a treat for us to be here.  We did dessert which included affogato's that went down a treat.  I guess we finished around midnight and I was a little 'slowish' the next day.

Kate 'photo bombing'

It also rained yesterday which is not good for picking grapes - but hopefully we'll all get out tomorrow and see what it's all about.  We'll hop in the car today and see a few of the local sites and Kate is skyping  her class tonight.

Hi Wendy here - I haven't got too much more to add to what Andrew has written.

This holiday has been about experiencing as many different things/places as possible - and staying at the Gite on Domaine Treloar is just another completely different experience. The Gite is over 200 years old and is built across three levels. The internal stairs are steep and narrow, and it just seems to be that whenever you want something or are looking for something it is always two levels away. Rachel has left some fantastic notes about the Gite and one if the things that made me laugh was when she mentioned that the washing machine only has cold water going to it - and that she didn't know why that was as she was never able to get a straight answer from the French plumber. I love talking to Jon and Rachel about the realities of living in France. I don't think it's as easy as it appears on the "Relocation" programmes that I love to watch :). We tried to get Rachel to explain to us about the constantly ringing church bells - very complicated, the main point is they ring every 15 minutes until midnight and then hourly!!! And yes we are right in front of a church .....

I loved our trip to Spain the other day - I had to laugh at myself as I wasn't going to swim because it wasn't warm enough (it was probably 25 degrees!!). I had to remind myself that the sea temperature was warmer than it ever would be in Christchurch - so in I went and it was lovely. We were in a village called Sant Marti - lovely, and of course there were wonderful church bells ringing right behind us when we were having lunch :).